


My Winter Song to You

by a_sinking_star



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Pre-Series, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-08 23:25:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19877815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sinking_star/pseuds/a_sinking_star
Summary: Written for the ASOIAF Kink Meme prompt “Cat/Ned: outside, in the cold, with their clothes on, and him keeping a gloved hand over her mouth to stop her from screaming.” Exactly what it says on the tin.





	My Winter Song to You

Afterwards, she will not be quite sure how she ended up here—outside in the snow, fully dressed, with Ned’s gloved hand against her mouth to muffle her cries as he takes her against the back wall of Winterfell’s stables.

Oh, the actual sequence of events that brought them here will be clear enough: a raven arrives from King’s Landing early in the morning, with a letter bearing Jon Arryn’s seal. Fearing dire news, Catelyn takes it from the Maester and goes at once to seek Ned in the godswood as he prays.

Winter is drawing to a close, finally, and the weather is now warm enough for Catelyn to step outside without fearing mortal harm to herself, but the grounds are blanketed in white and the snow is still falling. By the time she finds Ned, she is shivering and clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering, even hooded and wrapped in her cloak as she is.

He looks up at her in worry when her hears her footfalls—he knows she never comes here if she can help it. “Is something wrong, my lady? Is it the children?”

“The children are well, my lord,” she assures him. “Robb is at his lessons, and Sansa is breaking her fast in the nursery.” They share a smile at the thought of little Sansa, no doubt seated at her miniature table with perfect posture and eating as daintily as any full-grown lady. “But Lord Arryn has written. I thought you would want to know at once.” These past moons, rumours have reached them about the Iron Islands and Balon Greyjoy’s expanding fleet of warships; there is a chance that Jon Arryn’s raven is bringing news of war.

He stands and takes the scroll from her; his furrowed brow relaxes as he reads. “It is not bad news, my lady,” he tells her, and she feels a heady wave of relief sweep through her. Instinctively, she reaches out to grasp his hand. “Jon wants to discuss increasing the exports of saltwater fish from the North—”

Suddenly he frowns. “Catelyn, you’re shivering,” he says, realizing. He pockets the scroll so he can close the distance between them, sharing the warmth of his cloak and taking both her hands between his own to thaw them. In her worry, she had not quite realized that her fingers were going numb. “Forgive me, my lady. This winter seems mild to me. I often forget that you are unused to such weather.”

“I will grow accustomed to it in time,” she says, hoping it is true.

“Come. I will escort you back inside.” He keeps her close to him as he releases her hands to take her arm and turns back towards the Great Keep. She feels as though the heart tree is watching her reproachfully.

“My lord, I—I did not mean to interrupt your prayers…”

“They will keep,” he says firmly. She is reminded, quite suddenly, that his voice has given battle commands and demanded surrenders, but his arm holds hers so gently that the thought cannot frighten her.

The path he leads her down is unfamiliar, but it seems to be a more direct route back to the Great Keep than the one she usually takes. She does not even try to remember this shortcut—she will never know the godswood the way he does, and it has taken her years to learn just the one way in and out. Instead, she focuses on feeling his body so close beside hers, on her hand being warmed in the crook of his elbow, on the clean, wintery smell of him—woodsmoke and pine, leather and soap. Ned is shorter and stockier than his brother was, has coarse dark hair in places that Brandon did not. His is not the sort of body that Catelyn had dreamed of as a girl, and yet his touch has brought her more pleasure over the course of their marriage than she could ever have expected. Desire coils low in her belly now, and she feels herself blushing beneath the shadow of her hood.

When they pass behind the stables, out of sight of everyone going about their early morning business, Catelyn stops and pulls Ned to her and kisses him fiercely, wondering at her own boldness as she does so. She tells herself she has nothing to be ashamed of: he is her husband, she has borne him two children, and she has every right to kiss him, even if she is doing it behind the stables as though she has something to hide. In any case, he does not seem to mind, simply wrapping his arms around her waist beneath her cloak and deepening their kiss.

Since she is the one who instigated this little encounter, perhaps she should not be surprised when he kneels before her in the snow, lifting her heavy woollen skirts and pushing her smallclothes aside so that he can press open-mouthed kisses to the insides of her thighs. After all, they have lain together outside before, she must admit—in the godswood where no one would chance upon them, back in the summer when it was verdant and full of life, and a few times in the hot springs once the weather had grown colder. But here and now she is shocked in spite of herself; her face flushes a colour comparable to that of her hair, and she is about to draw away and remind Ned that they are _outside the stables_ and that _anyone might see them_ when she realizes that it really does not matter—the snow is falling too hard for anyone to see them clearly from afar, they are both dressed in nondescript grey wool, and her hair, always the most distinctive thing about her, is well hidden by her hood. If someone did catch sight of them, they would likely assume her to be some serving wench sneaking out with a stable hand, since no one, absolutely no one, would think that the Lord of Winterfell himself had hidden himself away behind the stables with his lady wife so he could bury his face in her cunt. And that thought thrills her somehow—that she is not a highborn lady in this moment, with all the responsibilities and pressures and privileges that entails, but just a woman who desires a man and is desired by him in return.

She presses her head back against the wooden wall as he finally stops his teasing kisses and firmly licks her nub, again and again and again, and her fingers scrabble for purchase against the slats behind her. From this angle, everything looks so beautiful—the pale grey sky, the falling snow, the ice-tipped trees of the godswood. Ned’s gloved index finger slips inside her and she has to bite her own sleeve to keep from crying out. She thinks of the first time he used his mouth on her, when they had been wed for but a week and she was still so shy with him, of how she had done her best to make no noise, until he stopped halfway through to ask if he was pleasing her at all and she moaned shamelessly at the loss of contact, inadvertently answering his question.

“Please, my lord, please, Ned,” she pants now, long past the awkwardness of those early days. “Another finger…” She cannot quite bring herself to finish the sentence, but she does not need to—he adds a second finger at once, even as he presses his tongue harder against her nub, and she muffles her cries with her sleeve again. The trees seem to spin. Her legs give out when she comes, but Ned withdraws his hand from between her legs quickly enough to catch her by the waist and keep her from falling. Still on his knees, he smiles up at her, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

“I have dreamed of doing that for some time now, my lady,” he admits. She has to laugh at that, and he ducks his head, shy again. His hair is damp from the snow when she runs her fingers through it.

“Of having me against the wall outside?”

“Aye. Outside, in the cold, with you all wrapped up like this.”

Hearing him speak thus, she does not feel the cold at all.

“And in these dreams of yours…what did we do next?” She laughs again at how quickly he gets to his feet, and tugs at the laces of his breeches as he pushes her skirts up around her waist again. He groans his encouragement in her ear, lifts her with an arm beneath her thighs so that she can sink onto him. Her body is held between his own and the stable wall, one of her legs wrapping around his waist while the toes of the other foot just barely brush the ground. She cries out in pleasure at the onslaught of sensations—rough wood against her back, cold wind on her face, the fullness of him inside her.

“Catelyn, there are people just on the other side of this wall,” he reminds her, quiet and urgent, his breath hot in her ear. And of course she _knows that,_ but she cannot seem to stop her breathy cries. Before she can promise to be quiet from now on, his hand is tight over her mouth and she can taste the leather of his glove. On an impulse, she takes one of his fingers into her mouth, sucking hard, and his eyes go as wide as they did the first time she did this to his cock. His other hand tightens on her hip through the layers of her skirts, hard enough to bruise. His breathing grows ragged, his thrusts more frantic. She bites the tip of his finger lightly, and he spills his seed inside her with a groan.

He sets her down gently, freeing one of his hands from its glove so he can finish her off with his fingers. His other hand stays in place over her mouth, and she screams against it when she comes.

The sun is beginning to rise in earnest now, and the sky has turned from grey to a perfect eggshell blue. _The children will be asking for me_ , she thinks as she collapses, boneless, against Ned’s chest. _I have ledgers to read and letters to write…_ Even as she thinks it, she clings to him, nestling her head into the crook of his shoulder, praying for a few minutes longer with him on this quiet winter morning.

“We should go inside, my lord,” she whispers at last. “We both have work to do.” He glances down at his hands, at his damp, stained gloves, and she bites her lip to keep from laughing. “Can they be salvaged?”

“I think so. Although I will have to somehow explain to the maids why they need to be.”

“Give them to me. Let me take care of it.” Before he can protest, she has them tucked into the folds of her skirt where she can feel them against her hip like a secret.

The snow is finally letting up when he leads her back inside, their clothes hastily straightened and her hair smoothed back beneath her hood.

“If you have other dreams that you wish to share with me, my lord, please do,” she says when they part ways at the door to her chambers, her fingers light against the inside of his wrist.

“Oh, I will, my lady,” he promises, kissing her forehead lightly in farewell. Alone in her chambers, she searches through her trunks for dry clothing. Her boots have soaked through and her skirts are damp and under any other circumstances the discomfort would have been at the forefront of her mind, but just now a part of her delights in it. Earlier, as she told Ned that she would grow accustomed to the weather in time, she had felt doubtful, but just now she feels hope bloom in her chest like a sapling stretching towards the promise of spring.

Some things, she thinks, are easier to get used to than others.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Winter Song" by Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading this. Feedback is always appreciated!


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